I currently have a pretty simple media server. It runs on a desktop made of old parts and has 4 6 TB drives in a raidz1 array. It is used by a lot of friends who add a lot of media, so its been nearly at capacity for a while. The desktop has no more open SATA ports or drive enclosures, so I’m not sure what the best option for adding more drives is.
I know the most obvious answer is buying NAS, but I think it might be a little complex for what I need, because no other devices need any access to this storage. I was considering purchasing a DAS, as it seems like a simple option, but I’ve seen many people say its not worth purchasing a DAS over a NAS. Any opinions would be appreciated.
Edit: Thanks for the suggestions! I’m likely going to go with a new case for some extra drive bays and a PCI-E SAS controller, this seems like the best option for the simplicity and price!
As others have said, running out of motherboard SATA slots doesn’t mean you need a new machine to support expansion.
You can get m2 adapter slots for more SATA drives.
If you think you’ll be building a NAS in the future, and are cheap like I am, you might consider getting a pci-e expansion card for SAS rather than SATA drives. They’re backwards compatibile with SATA drives, but open you up to being able to use SAS drives which are common in enterprise data centers. You can get used lots of those drives on eBay WAY cheaper per TB when the data centers hour them out.
I’ve got a machine with 16 SAS drives running the unRaid OS, and I’m very happy with it for data hoarding and media serving. The drives (with shipping) cost $5/TB.
I hadn’t really looked into SAS drives, but that sounds like a great option. $5/TB is awesome!